Only £21.5m Of £40m Allocated Used To Tackle Waiting Lists In NI

Only £21.5million of £40m allocated to tackle waiting lists in Northern Ireland was spent on the problem, according to the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP).

Mr Tom Elliott MP described the news as "shocking" and said: "There will be many thousands of people waiting for treatment who will find this revelation that almost half of the £40m couldn't be spent because it came too late absolutely abhorrent."

The Ulster Unionist Party has revealed that only £21.5m of a £40m allocation last year to tackle Northern Ireland;s spiralling waiting lists was spent on that problem.

UUP Health Spokesperson, Jo-Anne Dobson MLA, said: "The crisis affecting our entire health service is unprecedented. Currently over one in five of the population are on a hospital waiting list, often in unbearable levels of pain and anxiety.

"Whist many had hoped to benefit from last year's announcement of an extra £40m, they will quite understandably be furious today to learn than £18.5m was redirected to other pressures. At the time I warned the announcement had come so late in the financial year that hospitals would struggle to be able to respond and unfortunately that's exactly what has happened.

"Whilst much of the £18.5m was utilised on a range of other genuine pressures, such as domiciliary care and GP out of hours, it is simply unacceptable that patient expectations were raised so highly, only to be so cruelly knocked down. Whilst the headline allocation of £40m to tackle waiting lists was a convenient pre-election diversion for the DUP, their inept announcement of it meant only a fraction of the operations and treatments they promised would happen did happen."

(CD/LM)